Dark baryons and rotation curves

The best measured rotation curve for any galaxy is that of the dwarf spiral DDO 154, which extends out to about 20 disk scale lengths. It provides an ideal laboratory for testing the universal density profile prediction from high-resolution numerical simulations of hierarchical clustering in cold dark matter-dominated cosmological models. We find that the observed rotation curve cannot be fitted either at small radii, as previously noted, or at large radii. We advocate a resolution of this dilemma by postulating the existence of a dark spheroid of baryons amounting to several times the mass of the observed disk component and comparable to that of the cold dark matter halo component. Such an additional mass component provides an excellent fit to the rotation curve provided that the outer halo is still cold dark matter-dominated with a density profile and mass-radius scaling relation as predicted by standard CDM-dominated models. The universal existence of such dark baryonic spheroidal components provides a natural explanation of the universal rotation curves observed in spiral galaxies, may have a similar origin and composition to the local counterpart that has been detected as MACHOs in our own Galactic halo via gravitational microlensing, and is consistent with, and even motivated by, primordial nucleosynthesis estimates of the baryon fraction.